


Everything Changes

by Dontquitwhileyoureahead



Category: Jurassic Park (1993)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:53:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13369050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dontquitwhileyoureahead/pseuds/Dontquitwhileyoureahead
Summary: When Ellie and Alan return from the park nothing is the same. After nearly being killed by the creatures they've spent their lives studying, how could it be? Still, through all the nightmares and panic attacks and flashbacks, Ellie can't always bring herself to regret it.





	Everything Changes

Nothing was the same for Ellie after the park. She hadn’t expected it to be; but a small part of her hoped that it would. She’d always been good at being alright, but everyone had their limits, and as it turned out almost being killed by dinosaurs was Ellie’s.

She went back to the dig site with Alan because that was what she was supposed to do. Yes she loved Alan, and loved the site, but through all the nightmares, and panic attacks, and doubt, she stayed there because that was what she had been doing, and she intended to keep doing it. 

Even though that was what she had been doing, she was never quite able to where she was before the park. She tried; and there were moments when she thought that it might have worked. When she brushed dust from the Earth and joked with Alan, but in the end it came back to her.

A warm breeze tickling the back of her neck, is suddenly the hot breath of a velociraptor. She’s curled into a corner of their trailer when Alan finds her, after realizing she didn’t show up for dinner. Her hands are fisted in her hair, and he can just hear her whispering run over and over again. When he tries to pry her hands from her hair she jolts away, unable to differentiate between his hands, and the claws of a velociraptor. He steps away, instead trying to focus on slowing her breathing, and doesn’t touch her again until eventually she throws herself at him, clutching him almost painfully tight, but not tight enough to keep her from shaking in Alan’s lap.

There are other moments too. When she uncovers the wrong leaf, she’s no longer in dust of the badlands but rather the lush jungle of the park, and her hands shake so badly that she can’t return to work for the rest of the day. Moments when the howl of the wind turns into the shrieks of the raptors and all she can do is clutch at her ears and wait for it to go away.

The nightmares come and go. There are stretches of time when she sleeps peacefully, the only dreams in her head of a daughter with her hair and Alan’s eyes, who mispronounces the names of dinosaurs but neither of them mind. But then there are other times when she can never seem to escape the nightmares. When she can feel Mr. Arnold’s arm on her shoulder, but when she looks back it’s Alan’s arm instead, or Tim’s or Lex’s, and she knows it’s her fault. Other times it’s just her and a raptor, as it chases her through s maze of tunnels and corridors, and every time she thinks she’s escaped, it finds her; it’s breath too hot, too heavy on the back of her neck.

She wakes up screaming, and even as Alan curls tighter around her, whispers into her ear that they’re safe, she can’t manage to fall asleep again, instead pressing her head on Alan’s chest and listening to his heartbeat until morning comes. 

Alan has nightmares too, she knows. He doesn’t wake up screaming, shaking so hard he vomits, the way that she does. Instead he is perfectly still, rigid, because unlike Ellie, who is tormented by raptors, in his dreams it’s always the T-Rex, and he knows, even then, that the only way to survive is to remain perfectly still. He wakes up gasping Tim’s name, or Lex’s, and clutches Ellie to him, as she whispers that the kids are okay, tells him what they’ve been up to recently, until the sun peeks through the windows and they shakily rise to start the new day.

Even through all the bad changes, the nightmares, and panic attacks, and injuries; somehow things are different in good ways too.

There was the way Lex curled up against her in a hospital bed in Costa Rica, how she ran her fingers through the young girl’s hair, as she flinched, still fighting off dinosaurs in her sleep.

There was the way Alan told stories about their digs to Tim, stories of all the things they’ve dug up that weren’t dinosaurs or plants but instead coins and buttons, and relics of everyday life. The way Alan’s eyes light up as he tells the kids about the day a ferret managed to sneak into their trailer, with only a few exaggerations that Ellie didn’t bother to correct.

There was the week both of the kids came to visit them in Montana, how Alan showed Tim how to excavate a dinosaur bone, while she showed Lex the computer that gave them an image of the fossil they just found. When they all went camping for the weekend, and went swimming in the lake. And she thought about how they had chicken fights in the water, and Tim giggled atop Alan’s shoulders, how it never would’ve happened before they went to the park. She smiled at him from across the campfire, as Lex sat on her lap and they all ate s’mores, and thought about just how good some of the changes were.

And then there was when the kids had gone back home, and they both collapsed into bed exhausted. How Alan turned to her and whispered that he was ready to have kids. 

How his hands brushed her stomach, almost unbelievingly, when she told him she was pregnant. The slight tremor in his voice when he whispered “Really?”

How laughter bubbled up from her throat, and her eyes filled with tears, as she told him “yes yes yes.” 

How, finally, he laid next to her in her hospital bed, as their newborn daughter lay across her chest. How he had one hand holding hers, the other resting on their daughter’s back. The way he kissed her forehead that was a thank you and a promise all at once. 

And she smiled back at him and thought about how, inexplicably, she was a little bit grateful for that dinosaur park.


End file.
